Candle Jack
Reborn in the Sons of Ash Few know Jack’s birth name (Aedus Oriel), and fewer still use it. The son of Irish immigrants in the Industrial States, his parents both died in a flu epidemic, leaving him to fend for himself at a very young age. Not wishing to be doomed to a life in the factories, he stowed away on a cargo zeppelin bound for Hollywood land. The zeppelin was attacked over both the People’s Collective and Free Colorado, but the pirates were beaten back both times. The accumulated damage, however, finally caused a crash - landing in the Disputed Territories. The crew scrambled to make repairs, and the smoke and noise had doubtlessly attracted the attention of one of the many biker gangs that wrestle for control over the Territories. Of course, the crew had no such luck. That could have been the end of Aedus’s tale, but it wasn’t. The zeppelin was found by The Sons of Ash, and while the majority of the crew were shot, stabbed, slashed or burned alive, a few (and one stowaway) were recruited into the gang. Aedus was taken into the gang and raised as one of their own, The Sons being more akin to a tribe than a gang. Aedus learned to fight, mostly from the seat of his bike, how to survive and most importantly, how to maintain his bike. Eventually, on his sixteenth birthday he underwent formal initiation into the Sons of Ash. Full members were given new names, and through a process equal parts magic and hack job surgery, permanently grafted weapons. Aedus was now Candle Jack, and he sported a mean arm mounted flamethrower. Over the next few years Jack proved himself in battle time and time again, facing off against ground forces from both the nations bordering the Disputed Territories and against the other biker gangs. Eventually he was told to seek weapons or aid that would help the Sons of Ash take permanent control of the Disputed Territories and form a nation in their own right. Service in the French Foreign Legion Through a complicated series of events, Jack's quest led him to France, where he engaged in... questionable activities. Imprisoned alongside a handful of others that were too powerful or simply too bizarre to be handled through the normal legal channels, the group was recruited by Commandant Robert Pascal to serve in the French Foreign Legion. Considered too... volatile to work in France itself, they were sent to French Louisiana to help pave the way for it to be formally rejoined with France as a colony. The greatest barrier to this goal: Louisiana's powerful neighbors that may be unhappy to see direct European influence return to the continent. Those neighbors needed to be... distracted. Working for a man named Marchand, the group then traveled into Dixie, targeting the industrial facilities at Birmingham. Jack's connections to the Satan Bolts landed the group with a nice set of explosives, and to sweeten the deal, the group disguised themselves as Appalachian partisans when they attacked the factories. After escaping Dixie, the group was told to turn their sights on Texas and see what trouble they could cook up.